I fic, you fic, she fics, we fic...

[sylviesque]

My tenses are all confused, and my dialouge is fairly bad. Deal with it :D

Redemption
For all the broken hearts in here.

Oh, the torment bred in the race, the grinding scream of death and the stroke that hits the vein, the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief, the curse no man can bear.

But there is a cure in the house and not outside it, no, not from others but from them, their bloody strife. We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth.

Now hear, you blissful powers underground - answer the call, send help. Bless the children, give them Triumph now.

Living in a school filled with hundreds of witches and wizards for so many years, Professor Longbottom had never ceased to be surprised at how lonely he had always felt.

Even now, eighteen years after his own schooldays, Neville still found himself wondering why he’d been put in Gryffindor, when everyone else in that house had seemed so confident and popular and he had just faded into the stone walls of the common room, comforted only by Trevor. But even his beloved pet couldn’t help; it was just another anomaly that set him apart from everyone else. He’d desperately wanted an owl, but his uncle had bought him the toad for his birthday, and it wouldn’t do to ask for anything else. Not when his uncle had delighted in telling him about his own schooldays, and how excited he and Neville’s father had been when they were given their own toads. And Neville couldn’t help feeling that his grandmother was looking at him, wishing that he could be more like his parents, in whatever way he could, so he kept his mouth shut. And of course, he came to care for Trevor in time, and be grateful for his company, especially in the dormitory at night, when he’d wake, soaked in sweat and shaking, to the sound of Ron’s snores, thinking of his parents, lying in St. Mungo’s, not knowing or caring where in the world he was. And then he’d hate himself for thinking of them like that, so next time he visited them he’d make sure to give his mum an extra hug. It never helped though, going back to school and seeing Harry, surrounded by sympathy and admiration, and just wanting to scream, tell everyone that he’s alone as well, and having parents who don’t recognise you is just as bad as having no parents at all.

His first year was the hardest of course - it was bad enough that Malfoy and his cronies were always hankering after him, picking on his inability in potions or his clumsiness or his general demeanour. But what was even worse was that the people that he lived with, ate with, worked with, saw almost every moment of every day, always seemed so much better than him somehow, and yet, after all, they weren’t so different. In retrospect, Neville wished he’d realised that sooner, maybe he would’ve had more friends if once in a while he’d complain about an essay, instead of sneaking down to the common room late at night to finish it, to make it seem like he was no more incapable than the rest of them. Maybe if he’s talked about what they all talked about, Quidditch and how to curse your worst enemies into oblivion, maybe if he’d done that from the outset they wouldn’t have paired off so quickly - Dean and Seamus, Harry and Ron. After that happened, Neville knew he didn’t have much hope, it wasn’t like the Gryffindor girls were falling over themselves to make friends with him. Yet Hermione Granger chose Harry, famous Harry Potter, to be her friend, and Neville found himself frustrated at the injustice of it all, how Harry, who would have friends wherever he went, had to pick this stubborn, bossy, know-it-all for his companion, and Neville ended up with no one, as usual.

It took Neville years to realise that, although Harry may have been surrounded, and warm, and loved, he was still as alone as he’d ever been. Neville realised this because that was how he felt too.

It got easier though, in time, when the DA was formed, and Neville found out what it was like to have true friends (even though Luna did take some getting used too.) And soon he came to look on Hogwarts as his home almost as much as Harry did. The nightmares about his parents became less frequent, although they never stopped altogether, and when NEWTS and the war were over and done, Neville walked out of the gates towards Hogsmeade, with the distinct feeling that he would be back.
*
After the war, after he completed the necessary training and travelling required to teach Herbology, after he returned to Hogwarts, he was pleased to see that things had changed, although it soon became clear that not all the alterations were for the best. Still, there was a comfort in the continuity of some things, like the ghosts, the fat lady, the staircases, and how you could still see younger students feeding the giant squid in the summer. Yes, some things had simply suspended themselves in time, ageless and enduring, and when Neville first arrived back at Hogwarts on the first night of September, it was almost like he’d never left.

It was the sorting that convinced him otherwise. Not so much the ceremony itself - like the ghosts, it was essentially the same. No, it was the looks on the faces of the older students as the first years were herded into alphabetical order that unnerved Neville, those looks of stony anticipation, not excitement or curiosity. And the expressions became set, determined, when the house was called out, and Neville shivered as he realised this was no longer a traditional rite of passage for the first years; it was their judgement day. Neville had rarely questioned the clear-cut characteristics associated with the houses during his time - after all, he never thought of himself as brave, and Hermione was cleverer than most of the Ravenclaws, and somehow the sorting hat song hadn’t mattered so much really - rivalry might have coloured Quidditch matches and Potions class, but when it came down to the line, all that was important was being loyal to Hogwarts…

Yet after the war (or, as many people call it, “post-Voldemort”), house rivalry had clearly escalated, in the light of the Battle of Hogwarts and the lives lost and the long-established associations between Voldemort and Slytherin, and the Order of the Phoenix and Gryffindor. Even though it didn’t look like it, everything had changed inside Hogwarts’ walls, and Neville hated that it had, because with change comes the realisation that there will always be blame, scapegoats, and whether they deserved it or not, the descendents of the death eaters were going to pay the price for the blood spilled within the school they now attended. Neville found it ironic that the only Gryffindor student who didn’t seem to want revenge for all the loss was Teddy Lupin. Despite the sacrifice of his parents, Teddy never seemed to go about seeking vengeance. Neville often felt a pang of pity for this quiet, lanky boy, but never quite understands him, because he would have killed Bellatrix Lestrange if he’d had the chance, and of course Harry never stopped hunting for Voldemort. But despite his ignorance of Teddy’s thoughts, Neville was grateful that he just kept to himself. He firmly endorsed the headmaster’s decision to make him Head Boy, hoping that he would set an example to younger Gryffindors. Yet they only seemed to use Teddy as a focal point in their relentless pursuit of Slytherins, much as the DA had used Harry against Umbridge. Funnily enough, many of the clashes between the houses were fairly traditional methods of sabotage - hexing one another between classes, slipping hiccupping potion into jugs of Pumpkin juice, jinxing broomsticks before Quidditch practices. But there was undoubtedly a greater, more entrenched sense of bitterness than before, and jelly-legs jinxes and bat-bogey hexes weren’t just petty tricks any more, they smacked of a purposeful agenda, and they made Neville realise how personal and insignificant his own schooldays encounters had been compared to these. Most of the Slytherins had been scum, no doubt about that, but that was at a point in history when families had picked their sides, for fear of death or worse, and surely there was no need to choose any longer, now that Voldemort was dead and gone? Surely the reason they’d fought all those years was only to do with the rise and fall of the dark arts?

But, Neville thinks, remembering something Harry once said, and thinking of Snape and Zacharias and Cornelius Fudge, the world isn’t divided into good people and death eaters.

If only this generation could realise that, things would be so much simpler. The House colours at Hogwarts have become black and white, based on the loyalty shown to Harry at the Battle of Hogwarts, and why on earth have people taken so much trouble to remember what they never saw? It was the product of the time, the choice of the Slytherins to leave the other students to do battle, the risk they would have taken in standing apart from their pure-blood companions - but that’s not how today’s students see it, it was cold-blooded cowardice and contempt for mudbloods that had governed their decision. But whatever their motives, Neville still finds it unfair that their descendents are being blamed for their parents mistakes, history was being re-written on a daily basis, snapping fact into fiction. More than once, he’s had to issue detentions to students - only last week, to Emily Bones, who’d immobilised Adam Nott’s cat and flung it towards the Whomping Willow, screaming about her great aunt. And before that, Katie McDonald. Her mother had been a few years below Neville and had lost her father to the death eaters. It’s entirely possible that William Bladon had no connections whatsoever with Voldemort’s followers, but as a Slytherin, he’d ended up in the hospital wing nevertheless. And Neville remembers how Harry had put Draco there, and he would have done the same to countless Slytherins if he’d had the guts or skill, but they had had a reason, a war was coming, and they were picking their sides, just as their parents had done. They had not fought, and killed, and seen their friends die, so that Hogwarts would continue to exist in a state of perpetual enmity. That was never the reason for anything. Every so often, Neville catches a glimpse of Nearly-Headless Nick in the corridor, who meets his gaze with sombre, silent eyes, as if to say, “I remember what you fought for, even if no one else does.”

A better world¸ Neville thinks, and although the Ministry has improved dramatically, and house-elves have more rights, and the dark mark hasn’t been seen in years, what’s the point in calling it a better world when students are afraid to walk between classes by themselves, when the Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes Shield Hats were selling out on Hogsmeade weekends? Yet he appreciates Nick’s wordless encouragement nonetheless, for he had come to realise, in his last year at Hogwarts, that it is often the unspoken that fires us from within, and maybe that’s why non-verbal spells can save you. But that was not how he thought in his first year, when he would have given anything for the kind of praise teachers bestowed upon Hermione, or Harry, yet when Dumbledore awarded him the ten points that won them the house cup, he fumed at the indignation of it all. How pathetic his ten points had seemed, next to the 150 of the trio - just another attempt by Dumbledore to make him feel worth something, that had instead made him feel worse than before. Thank Merlin for the revelations he experienced in seventh year, when it was surviving, and not house points, that was important. And that was also when he started realising that it is not always cheers or yells that show support, and how foolish it was to ache for the kind of glory one got from playing Quidditch. Lying in the oddly empty dormitory at night, with only Seamus for company, it became apparent that glory was entirely redundant, and yet during the day whispers flew back and forth in the corridors, about how Neville Longbottom had stood up to the Carrows, and wasn’t he brave and stupid and reckless and do you think he can save us, but Snape wouldn’t (couldn’t) stand for that. After talking between classes was banned though, Neville somehow became more aware of the stares at his back, saw all the more clearly the silent encouragement behind the eyes of not only his year mates, but students he’d barely seen, never met - but they were all saying the same thing: “We’re all behind you, keep strong, keep fighting.” Then the day would lighten with hope, and he’d go about with a warmth in his stomach like freshly swallowed butterbeer. And at night the warmth became fire, burned red and gold onto the castle walls: “Dumbledore’s army, still recruiting”, and Neville, hands smeared with his house colours, felt brave, and brilliant and sharp and alive, and oh, the irony of it all, that it takes death and destruction to show what we really are, who we can be, how much we are willing to give up in order to truly live.

What was it all for, he thinks, dully, as he heads down to greenhouse number four. He and his seventh years will be tackling Venomous Tentacula today, but not for the first time Neville wishes he could cancel class and just talk to his students, who were all well prepared for their upcoming NEWTS, yet Neville feels like he has never taught them anything. All he wants to do is take each of them by their shoulders and shake them, yell at them, hex them, anything that will make them realise how lucky they are to live in an age when the Dark Mark is only a picture in History of Magic class, and to make them tell him why they won’t just look their peers in the eye and forgive them for what they’ve never done?

But every lesson and every day is like this now, and Neville has almost given up hope of redemption. So instead, he tries to teach them how to be tolerant - after all, he reasons (thinking of Malfoy and Buckbeak, and the SPEW badge in his desk drawer), it’s an important lesson to learn. But he can’t preach or be too upfront, to do so would simply underline the subtle yet obvious tensions within the classes. It’s far simpler to incorporate it into the curriculum, and after all, he’s always understood plants better than people: don’t touch the Whomping Willow, and it won’t touch you. Let sleeping mandrakes lie, etc. Yet it’s not enough to ease the fraught silences in the greenhouses, silences that indicate something more than thoughts on how to sabotage the upcoming Quidditch match. Sometimes it’s all too much, and when the blood builds up behind Neville’s eyes with stress and worry, the temptation to pack up his trunk and books and office and just leave again seems the only option. But he’ll force himself to remember that he came here to teach, and he can’t abandon Hogwarts anyway. Since his grandmother died - well, before that really - Hogwarts was always his home. So sometimes he’ll go along the corridors at night, and find the Room of Requirement, wish for a place to escape…a place to escape…a place to escape…and then he’ll find himself back in the old room, slung about with hammocks and fading house banners, and be at peace for a little while. Occasionally he’ll go see Aberforth, using the passageway, and they’ll talk about the years that followed the war, exchange news of Harry and Ron and Teddy, and for the few days that follow, Neville starts to feel just a little more optimistic about the whole situation, for, compared to eighteen years ago, things were after all, much better.

Today however is one of those less hopeful days, and after class, Neville heads down to Hagrid’s hut. Buckbeak is outside, but he avoids him nervously - Neville has always preferred plants to animals. Except Fang - he’d got used to him after so many teatimes with Hagrid. He’d got used to Hagrid too, eventually, and wonders why he’d ever found him frightening - although he suspects it had something to do with Blast-Ended Skrewts.

“Hi Hagrid. Hi James.”
Harry’s junior doppelganger, eyes excepted, grinned back. “Hey, Professor”.
Neville had always thought, privately, that Harry and Ginny had used the muggle concept of a post-war baby boom to get busy. But he couldn’t pretend not to like the Potter kids, although Lily had always been his favourite.
“Oh, James, please. I’m off duty. Call me Neville, and hand me one of those pastries.”
“Whatever you say, Neville.” James smiled impishly, and Neville, with a jolt, thought of Fred and George, and canary creams…
“Neville, seeing as how you’re off duty, d’you mind if I keep telling Hagrid about my…exploits, my dad calls them?”
“Go ahead. Merlin knows I could use a laugh.”
“Well - anyway Hagrid, that Parkinson boy was saying horrible things about auntie Hermione in charms the other day, calling her a…” Here James paused, and mouthed, “mudblood”, Hagrid frowned. “And then, he said that when her filthy daughter came to Hogwarts, his mum had told him to give her something to remember him by. I got so mad, but I waited after class, because I’m not stupid enough to hex him in front of Professor Goldstein, and then I followed him and…”
“…And what?” asked Neville, fury rising in his throat.
James burst into peals of laughter.” Let’s just say he won’t be sitting comfortably for a while, sir! That hive-hex is excellent, Uncle George taught it to me to use on those disgusting Slytherin slimeballs…”
“Damnit James, not you as well!”
James stuttered slightly, thrown by the look on Neville’s reddened, still somewhat rounded face, a look of disappointment and anger.
“It was only a joke! Anyway, I can’t let them talk like that and get away with it!”
“That’s not the point James! It’s not up to you, it’s up to the teachers! You’re so damn complacent, thinking you can do anything to anybody just because you feel like it! This is a school, and the Battle of Hogwarts is over! I thought you were the last person I’d have to tell that to!”

Neville stood, having risen in anger, blood beating against his skull and his breaths quick and shallow. In all his years of teaching, he’d never lost his temper with any student, remembering his own fear of Snape and on occasion, McGonagall. Not wanting to be intimidating, he’d always looked out for students, not shouted them down. And he never thought he’d speak like that to James, never. He’d watched him grow up, he was his sister’s godfather, he was his father’s friend….

…And yet, should that make a difference? He was talking to James here, not Harry, and Merlin knows he couldn’t let him get away with an attitude like that…But it was so hard to look at him, the spitting image of the boy who lived (except his eyes - he had Ginny’s eyes), and remember what his father had been through, how badly he must want to avenge the hurt and the loss. Neville knows how he feels.

“James, look…” but James’ mouth was set, and his face seemed to crumple in an effort not to cry. He rose, stiffly, and walked out of the hut. Neville saw him out of the window, running towards the Forbidden Forest.

“Gone to see Firenze, I ‘spect,” grunted Hagrid. “Tea, Professor?”
Neville sank into his seat with a weak smile. “Got any Firewhisky?”
Hagrid poured the amber liquor into two beakers (Neville noticed how much more Hagrid gave him than normal), and the two sipped silently.
“You know, Neville,” said Hagrid, causing Neville to look up in surprise at the use of his first name, taking him back to his schooldays, “you shouldn’ be so ‘ard on ‘im. He’s only a kid, see. Doesn’t know what’s right yet, needs ter find where he stands and all. No use telling firs’ years what’s what in Hogwarts. They gotta find it for ‘emselves.”
“He’s so like Harry…” sighed Neville, gazing vacantly out of the window. “Always looking for trouble…”
“But he’s lookin’ for the right reasons, Neville. Just like ‘is dad. And he didn’t end up too bad, now did he?”
“But that’s just it, Hagrid! He shouldn’t have to look for trouble! The war ended nearly nineteen years ago, he wasn’t even born then! And it’s not just him, everyone in the school seems to harbour all this hatred, all this desire for revenge, and for what? Revenge won’t bring back Dumbledore, or Snape, or Fred or anyone!”
Neville broke off, then finished, somewhat lamely, “They’re just…kids.”
Hagrid nodded wisely. “An’ nothin’ you do is going to stop that. They’ll understand eventually, see.”
Neville glanced up, and Hagrid looked him in the eye, and said seriously, “You remember what it was like to be a kid, Neville. An’ there was the war, an’ your parents an’ all. You can’t ‘spect them to deal with being a kid as well as hearing all these stories. They have to sort themselves out. An’ they will, in the end.”

There was a knock on the door.
“Ah,” said Hagrid, a grin spreading across his aging face. “Forgot to tell you who was comin’…”
The door opened, and in walked Luna Lovegood.
*
Neville had seen Luna since the war, of course. The months after the fall of Voldemort and the defeat of his remaining death eaters had caused happy chaos of the kind never seen in the Wizarding world, now that the Dark Lord had been definitively conquered. It wasn’t long before people had started to use his name, speaking it hesitantly at first, but then without fear. They appeared in the streets again, talking and laughing. Fillibusters Fireworks sold out (no one asked what George Weasley was doing to replenish his stock), and every wizard pub in the country had done a roaring trade for weeks on end. But most of the Hogwarts students chose to celebrate by staying at school until the end of the year, although exams were out of the question. Hermione left only briefly, saying she had business in Australia, and Ron and Harry went to the Burrow until her return, to attend Fred’s funeral. Neville stayed in Gryffindor tower however - his grandmother was enjoying no longer being a fugitive, and had decided to celebrate by visiting Frank’s brother and his wife, who had gone to America after the fall of the Ministry. Neville didn’t mind though, he was content to stay and help repair the damage the giants had done to the greenhouses. And Luna was there as well, since her home was inhabitable, so they’d spend much of their time together, he re-plotting plants and pruning, and she happily checked the pots for various creatures that Neville didn’t know existed. They talked of their plans for after Hogwarts - Luna determined to go travelling, and when Neville asked her where, she replied, thoughtfully, “Vampire country I expect. Daddy says there is a very knowledgeable bachelor there who can give us the precise location of a crumple-horned Snorkack, and we wouldn’t want to travel all the way and not find one.”

But aside from the occasional owl and the rarer rendezvous in Diagon Alley, Neville had barely set eyes on Luna since that summer. She’d taken to travelling and research, and had started writing about magical creatures. Hagrid later explained that this was her reason for returning to Hogwarts - a unicorn foal had been spotted in the forest, and the giant squid was behaving most unusually, starting to look on first-years as a form of food themselves, rather than the cold toast they offered. Thank Merlin they teach them petrificus totalus properly, thought Neville…

Neville and Luna walked through the grounds in comfortable silence. This was another thing he’d always liked about her, he didn’t feel the need to qualify himself with conversation, for she had never judged him on his intelligence or wit. Neville suspected this was because she was so used to being analysed and criticised, and, whether she appeared to care or not, he knew from experience that it was so difficult to ignore stares and not internalise sneers and comments. So he never judged her either, instead taking interest in her kookiness and her quirky outfits, and admiring her talent as a witch as well - she was remarkably adept at Transfiguration, something Neville had always struggled with.

Luna’s hair caught the sun, silver and gold all at once, rippled like waves in wind, and Neville realised how much he had missed her.

They came to the lake and sat down, leaning against the trunk of an old oak. In the distance, the Whomping Willow shook its branches lazily. Neville could hear the chatter of students flooding out of classes, the school day was over.

“I’ve missed it here,” sighed Luna. “Although I’ve always remembered it as being…bigger, somehow.”
“Did you come back ever?”
“After we finished, do you mean? No. You would have seen me anyway.”
“Oh. Of course.”
She gazed out over the lake, where the sunlight was splintering off the surface, and announced, dramatically, “I think the giant squid must be breeding.”
Neville snorted, hastily turning it into a cough. She did not appear to notice, but continued, “That’s what my father thinks as well. That’s why it’s searching for meat. Solid food for its young. Tastier than Mermaids. Not so tough.”
Neville was nonplussed. “But Luna, how would it breed? There’s only one giant squid in the lake, at least, that’s what Hagrid always said.”
She fixed him with a stare. “Have you never heard of cross-breeding, Neville?”
Neville gaped, and tried to banish the mental images that had somehow wormed their way into his brain…there were a lot of strange creatures in the lake…
“How do you think creatures have survived throughout the ages? Wizards? Centaurs?”
“Centaurs? But…they always seem to behave like humans are…below them…”
“It’s pride. That’s all it is. They don’t like to be seen as beasts of burden, or humans who have no idea of a greater power or destiny…so they convince themselves that they are independent of fate’s hand, that they themselves can control it simply by reading the stars.”
“Can’t they?”
Luna laughed, and Neville thought of silver bells in spring air.
“Of course not. They never stop and think that the first stargazers might have been wrong. No one can foresee their own fate, Neville. That was Voldemort’s greatest tragedy. He thought he could force his own existence…” Luna paused. “But, no matter how scared I was of him, I always knew death would catch up to him in the end.”
“How?” Neville found himself hanging onto her every word.
“Blood. He was only human, Neville, no matter how hard he tried. He wasn’t even a pureblood, not that that would have made a difference. Someday, everyone will realise that where we come from doesn’t define us.”
Snape’s face flashed in Neville’s mind, and Malfoy’s, and James’…
“When do you think they will realise?” asked Neville, and there was a two-toned quality in his voice, a quiet desperation tinged with hope.
Luna laughed again, playfully. “The day I catch a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, that’s when.”
Neville smiled. “Still haven’t found one?”
“These things take patience, Neville. They don’t happen overnight…”

And as the two walked towards the castle, in the light of the dying sun, Neville looked at her, and smiled, for the first time that year. As always, she was right.

Healing just takes time, that’s all.